FREDDIE CRESPIN V. CHARLES RYAN, ET AL, No. 18-15073 (9th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit denied a petition for panel rehearing and denied on behalf of the court a petition for rehearing en banc. Judge VanDyke, joined by Judges Callahan, Ikuta, Bennett, R. Nelson, and Bumatay, dissented from the denial rehearing en banc. Judge VanDyke wrote that the term “clearly established Federal law” under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act only refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of the Supreme Court’s decisions; and that the Supreme Court has emphasized that if this court must extend a rationale before it can apply to the facts at hand, then by definition the rationale was not “clearly established.”
Court Description: Habeas Corpus. The panel denied a petition for panel rehearing and denied on behalf of the court a petition for rehearing en banc. Judge VanDyke, joined by Judges Callahan, Ikuta, Bennett, R. Nelson, and Bumatay, dissented from the denial rehearing en banc. Judge VanDyke wrote that the term “clearly established Federal law” under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act only refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of the Supreme Court’s decisions; and that the Supreme Court has emphasized that if this court must extend a rationale before it can apply to the facts at hand, then by definition the rationale was not “clearly established.” Judge VanDyke wrote that this court has once again transgressed this command, this time by extending the rationale of Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), which held that the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile offenders, to a case that involved a state with a discretionary sentencing scheme and a habeas petitioner who had accepted in his plea agreement a sentence of life-without-parole (LWOP). Judge VanDyke wrote that, even so, the panel improperly extended Miller as having “clearly established” that a non-mandatory LWOP sentence for juveniles—be it voluntary or discretionary—violates the Eighth Amendment; and that, particularly given the Supreme Court’s repeated admonitions directed at this court CRESPIN V. RYAN 3 to stop misapplying AEDPA, the panel’s improper extension of Miller merited en banc correction. He wrote that the court should have taken the case en banc to vacate the panel decision and dismiss the appeal as moot on account of Crespin’s death.
This opinion or order relates to an opinion or order originally issued on August 19, 2022.
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